When You Need Help Recovering Important Data

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Emergency data recovery is usually carried out when one needs help in recovering data that they deem to be very important. In some cases, computers crash, leaving the owners contemplating what to do next. Often times the data is crucial and needed for other important processes, which leaves little else to do but to call an emergency data recovery service like Hard Drive Recovery Group.

If you find your data deleted, or the data storage device damaged, the first thing to do, if you have no knowledge of data recovery procedures, is to call a professional to help with the recovery process. Other than that, there are things you can do to help make their job easier. Firstly, try and not move the data storage device, which in most cases is a hard disk drive. Moving it might cause further damage, especially if the problem is of a physical nature. There are correct packaging procedures recommended by manufacturers like Seagate.

You do not want to change any configuration details, or the boot sectors for that matter. Of you have no idea as to how these operate; you are better off leaving these alone until a recovery professional gets there. If you do get an error message from your computer, note it down, as it might be helpful to the engineer.

Lastly, isolate the damaged disk and remove all network cables. This is useful if the cause of the data loss is a virus attack. Doing this will ensure that the loss is restricted to minimum data as possible.

An emergency data recovery plan is essential for the protection of important files in an office computer. Who knows if a disaster can occur in your office any time which knocks out the power and damages the system. When it comes to office computer files, you’ve got to have the emergency  plan as backup. Such a plan ensures that your computer data is easily recoverable, in the event of data loss due to any reason. There are some things that must be taken into consideration if you are searching for an emergency data recovery plan.

Thinking About Data Recovery Planning

First of all, you should think about getting a cloud backup. You should carefully schedule regular backups of all computer systems regardless of how many computers you have at the office. Since the data stored on your computer is very critical to your business, it is highly recommended that you should arrange for regular backups to be able to retrieve data. Secondly, you can use cloud computing. It is growing in popularity as people in different parts of the world share files and data with it. Although these two things are effective but not as effective as emergency data recovery software is. In case you do not have IT professionals, you should consult with a firm which specializes in emergency data recovery services.

Losing important data is like a nightmare. It can ruin your business and affect the operations radically. In fact, it can embarrass you in front of customers. You may lose important customers or cause dissatisfaction among the honest ones. If you lose your data, then at first you should contact emergency data recovery service provider. There are many emergency data recovery service companies that can serve you in difficult times. Instead of taking tension at that critical time, it is suggested to research and go for service provider well in advance and keeps contact information handy. You can ship it to their office. If your device(s) is/are heavy and bulky as in the case of arrays or services, they can straight away send a team of experts to your place.

Before starting work on the data recovery, these professionals check the storage media check the level of damage, present a report about the files that have a possibility of recovery and tell you the approximate price involved. Only if that is suitable to you, will they begin their work. There is no compulsion to go with their services if you do not find it good. If you need just one file, they can assist you with the recovery as well. It is not the quantity but the worth of the data that matters.

The easiest way to find a good emergency service provider is to read reviews of the services from individual customers and business class people which have a long standing in the industry. A service provider who has a wide and a reputable customer base and also the required state – of – the – art equipments to make a good recovery job is what matters the most in such a situation.

There are varieties of services that you will expect from a serious emergency data recovery service provider. All the services have to be very fast so as you can access the data you need in no time. Everything you need done by the emergency data recovery expert will be done efficiently and at no time. First of all, you will most probably get a free evaluation so as to get a complete diagnosis of the problem at hand. Within no time, you will get a report on the data that can be retrievable and if there is data that is unretrievable you will be told and the reason will be given too.

For the overall drive repair, it will take only twenty four hours for serious service providers whereas it will take close to a week for the normal recovery process. For sure, the emergency data recovery will come at an extra cost but it should always be a reasonable fee. The emergency data recovery services are always special for you can get the recovery process do
ne even on holiday and even on weekends. All you have to make sure is that the service providers you choose is recognized and up to the task.

One thing you need to do is to consult a technician concerning your software selection. If you are buying it from an online company, you should consider calling the customer care agent to be sure of what you are buying. Ensure that the technician confirms to you whether it is compatible with your OS.

Before settling for particular software, take enough time in going through as many programs as possible to see what each one of them has to offer. How effective is it? Can it offer all the services that you need? These are the questions you need to ask yourself as you go through them. The purpose of going through these programs is also to compare their prices. Choose software that is more effective with a reasonable price.

You should also take time to determine the amount of damage caused on your hard disk. There are levels of damage you cannot handle by yourself. You will need an expert to help you to recover your data. If your hard disks have been exposed to natural disasters such as floods, fire and thunderstorms, you should be careful to call an expert to handle them. Handling them would bring more harm to them and make it impossible to recover your data.

Homeschooling Continues To Grow

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Consider two examples of American youth. Daniel is becoming knowledgeable about the metric system, has read the Esther Forbes classic Johnny Tremain, easily identifies the four states that border Mexico, can confidently define “recluse” and “esoteric,” and still has time to tend goal for his ice-hockey team. Daniel is eight.

Charlotte, an equestrian with awards in dressage, doubles as a Taubman piano instructor in training. She was recently awarded a generous financial-aid package to attend Mt. Holyoke College. At 17, Charlotte was the youngest non-college student in a math course at the University of Massachusetts, and one of the few enrolled who earned an A.

What these two young people have in common is that they are members of a growing popular movement known as “homeschooling.” According to U.S. News & World Report, the number of students taught at home grew from 10,000 in 1970 to 350,000 in 1991. The Virginia-based Home School Legal Defense Fund has estimated the number at over 400,000.

While politicos regularly campaign on a “quality day care for all working Americans” boiler-plate platform to woo busy, overtaxed constituents, homeschoolers have politely turned their backs on the idea of “professionals” teaching their offspring. Instead, they have opted for what critics, such as Thomas A. Shannon of the National School Boards Association, call “a giant step backward into the seventeenth century.”

The modern homeschooling movement had its roots, appropriately, in the 1960s. Unbeknown to one another, two educators – one a humanist, the other a former Christian missionary – were reaching the same conclusion: conventional schooling has largely failed at its task of educating and nurturing children.

John Holt was a veteran teacher in alternative-style schools when his book Why Children Fail was published in 1962. His thesis was that children’s curiosity can be killed by a system that is ill-suited to individual learning needs. Mr. Holt’s twin slogans – “Living is learning” and “Growing without schooling” – have become the philosophical backbone for the wing of the movement that veers to the left.

At about the same time, Dr. Raymond Moore was conducting an aggressive inquiry into previously unstudied areas. One of the questions he set out to answer was: Is the institutionalizing of young children a sound educational policy? Amazingly, he discovered that the findings of a hundred noted researchers (including eminent family psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner) recommended “a cautious approach to subjecting the developing nervous system and mind [of children] to formal constraints.”

Dr. Moore’s data led him and his wife, Dorothy (a reading specialist), to pioneer a renewed and enthusiastic interest in homeschooling through their research institute, the Moore Foundation. The Moores’ firm, gentle, and ecumenical approach to homeschooling (balance study, work, and service with a child’s developmental needs) have earned them a following that started with fundamentalist Christians but has since spread widely.

Balancing the Ledger

Following one of these alternatives has been neither cheap nor easy for potential homeschoolers. As recently as 1982, only two states had laws guaranteeing their rights. Legislative and court battles fought throughout the 1980s now make homeschooling legal in all fifty states, although homeschoolers’ legal status varies from state to state. For example, Oregon requires that homeschooled children periodically take standardized tests; Texas homeschoolers can simply declare their home a private school; Massachusetts homeschoolers have to obtain permission from local authorities.

To be sure, homeschoolers do get some help. Teaching supplies, computer software, cassettes, videos, etc. are proliferating. An October 1991 U.S. Department of Education Working Paper, by Patricia M. Lines, explains that “there are approximately 25 suppliers supplying a complete, year-long package, and with at least one-hundred students enrolled.”

Unlike families in earlier days whose children were “privately educated,” the average homeschooler today is far from rich. A 1990 survey of Maine home-schoolers by the David C. Cook Publishing Company, for example, revealed that 70 per cent of respondents had an annual pre-tax household income of less than $35,000. Why would these parents undertake such a burden?

Homeschooling is far more flexible than conventional schooling. Homeschoolers can supplement their children’s educations with private lessons, apprenticeships, correspondence courses, and hobbies. And it seems effective. In fact, the National Home Education Institution (yes, a homeschool think tank), in a recent nationwide study, “found achievement on standardized tests was at or above the eightieth percentile.”

Even more important, homeschooling protects children from condom distribution, multicultural mumbo jumbo, new-age relaxation techniques, knife-wielding sophomores, etc. While smaller, religious schools are often a significant improvement over the public schools, there is no guarantee that students will be spared the difficulties that occur when X number of students are warehoused together on a daily basis. In addition, homeschooling helps children avoid the negative social aspects of school life by promoting a strong family bond. The trump card the educational establishment used to play against homeschooling is socialization, but the notion that homeschoolers are misfits has been struck a death blow by a young man named Larry Shyers. Dr. Shyers recently completed a doctoral dissertation in which he challenged the myth that youngsters schooled at home “lag” in social development. In his study, eight-to-ten-year-old children were videotaped at play. Their behavior was observed by trained counselors who did not know which children went to regular schools and which were homeschooled. Their conclusion: “The study found no big difference between the two groups of children in self-concept or assertiveness, which was measured by their social development tests. But the videotapes showed that youngsters who were taught at home by their parents had consistently fewer behavioral problems.”

While not a panacea for all the educational ills of our age, homeschooling clearly deserves to be supported as generously as choice in fighting the cultural and moral relativism of the ever-fading Western civilization. Homeschooling families could use some help in their lonely battles against the foes of liberty, individual responsibility, and learning.

Wall Street Pushes For-Profit Education

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THE “education industry” was born as a news story in the New York Times this January. Few of the companies that make up the industry are yet household names — Sylvan Learning Systems, DeVry, ITT Educational Services, KinderCare — but they’re now officially on the map.

This spring, two major investment houses — Lehman Brothers and Smith Barney — hosted conferences to introduce institutional investors and investment bankers to the leaders of roughly thirty for-profit education companies looking to raise capital in the equity markets. Their interest in education should be warmly welcomed.

John McLaughlin, editor of The Education Industry Report (based in St. Cloud, Minn.), has developed an index to rate the performance of 25 publicly traded education stocks. Last year, the Education Industry Index climbed a whopping 65.5 per cent (the Dow Jones Industrials were up 37 per cent). During the first eight months of this year the index rose another 38 per cent.

Why has Wall Street taken a sudden interest in education companies? For the same reason Wall Street is interested in any industry. America spends roughly $600 billion per year on education, or roughly 10 per cent of our gross national product. That’s second only to health care (14 per cent) and more than twice as much as we spend on national defense (4 per cent). As media mogul turned education entrepreneur Chris Whittle reminds us, one point of market share in the elementary – secondary market alone equals $3 billon.

Analysts compare education today to the health-care industry twenty years ago. Until the 1970s, health care was inefficiently managed and dominated by the public sector and non-profit entities that had little direct competition and little incentive for innovation. Costs rose markedly without corresponding improvements in the quality of care. Doctors and boards of directors of non-profit hospitals were the “gatekeepers” in those days, much as local school boards and unionized teachers have a lock on service delivery in education. Then along came HMOs, and a multibillion-dollar industry was born.

It is no coincidence that investment banks have created the notion of “Education Management Organizations” (EMOs) in their investment literature as one of several sectors of the education industry. Companies like the Edison Project and Education Alternatives, Inc., have been the big players in the K – 12 arena, but the sector also includes management companies in pre-school and higher education. The biggest performer in the latter sector is the Phoenix-based Apollo Group.

Apollo operates the University of Phoenix, a chain of stand-alone for-profit universities, and it also contracts with smaller universities to provide students with specific degree offerings. Catering to the schedules of working people, most of the schools operate from 8 A.M. to 8 P.M. An on-line component is also offered, either as a stand-alone means of earning a degree or to augment campus-based offerings. Apollo’s stock was offered for $11 per share when the company went public two years ago (with adjusted current value of about $2.40 after a secondary offering and four stock splits). Today, it trades in the mid-20s. When asked if the University of Phoenix has to spend time on “fundraising,” founder John Sperling replied, “We don’t need an endowment. We have Wall Street.”

In addition to education-management groups, the education industry includes sectors such as educational services (learning centers, test-preparation companies) and educational products (textbooks, software).

Sylvan Learning Systems is one of the fastest-growing companies in the educational-services sector. In addition to offering tutorial services (focused on reading, math, and school readiness), Sylvan is now also operating remedial-education programs for 9,000 students in 62 school systems around the country. The company is also expanding into the growing area of testing.

For the market to exist, there have to be buyers. Who’s buying and why? First among reasons for private-industry success is widespread dissatisfaction with the current systems, both at the K – 12 and the post-secondary levels.

But there are other forces at work as well. Companies like Apollo and Sylvan are taking advantage of a trend concomitant with the rise of the knowledge economy: while the premium paid for intellectual capital is at an all-time high (ask Bill Gates), many are questioning the value of formal academic credentials (again, ask Bill Gates).

Michael Prowse, writing for the Financial Times in November 20, 1995, argues that “Higher degrees serve a function akin to that of the exotic plumage of birds: they are primarily a means of attracting attention, of signaling that you deserve special attention.” In today’s world, as Sylvan Learning Systems knows well, “simple tests of cognitive ability can be administered in less than 30 minutes. Such tests, which can be tailored to the needs of particular companies, are a better guide to job performance than academic degrees.”

THE growth of for-profit education comes in the context of the whole reform movement that sprang up in response to the Nation at Risk report. Many reform initiatives have been tried since the Nation at Risk report.

These reforms (charter-school legislation; vouchers, whether publicly or privately funded) are vital in that they establish the policy framework within which real progress can occur. Deregulation has helped to create an atmosphere in which private companies have been able to enter the education arena. If such reforms are allowed to flourish, a free (or much freer) market in education should lead to the same increases in quality, diversity, and freedom that have touched American life in every other domain.

Of course, market forces can frighten producers — and the teachers’ unions and education bureaucracies are practiced at protecting their turf. But corporations by profits will move in slowly, looking for market niches by identifying areas that are underserved. Currently, education companies are nibbling around the edges, taking on aspects of school operations that are grossly underperforming, or areas that the traditional system would just as soon cast off: reading remediation; alternative schools for troublemakers; testing; maybe busing and food service. As businesses prove themselves and the public becomes more comfortable with the intermingling of public and private goods, policymakers will be forced to allow more opportunities.

More and more progressive educators and administrators are embracing the idea of “contracting out” for various school services as a way to allow them to focus better on their core mission. Others see “privatization” as a means of trimming overhead or controlling costs. Both of these are desirable outcomes, but fail to grasp the far greater potential of the private marketplace to transform public education.

As new products and services are developed with new “value added,” consumers — through their rational spending decisions — expand the industry. Call it “the Starbucks factor.” Because of increases in quality, variety, convenience, and atmosphere, people have been willing to shell out $3.50 for a caffe latte instead of the usual buck and a quarter for a cup of Maxwell House.

The potential for new educational services and products is as limitless as the creativity of the human mind and the dynamism of a competitive marketplace. Michael Heise, law professor and director of Indiana University’s Center of Education Law and Policy, puts it this way: “Investors are chiseling away at the dam of the last remaining government monopoly in the world. Were the dam to break, I expect there would be a flood of investment in educational research and development.”

As education shifts from a political to an economic model, overall education spending is likely to rise, not fall, contrary to conventional prophecy. There is every reason to expect that consumers will expand the market for education — once they are assured they are getting what they pay for. Such a shift will create increasing opportunity for investors — and for students.

British Public Schools Present A Problem For Government

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Public schools have always had a mesmeric effect on both parties. Churchill instructed Butler not to touch them in 1942; Gaitskell got the mineworkers to defeat a resolution to abolish them at party conference in 1958; Hattersley was blocked from being education minister in 1974 because he was seen as too enthusiastic to tackle them; Peter Kellner in the Independent on Monday described how civil servants blocked Labour policy thereafter. So it is understandable that Tony Blair is running scared.

The truth is that the independent schools are currently in one of their whingeing moods. They have been hit badly by the recession and the rundown in Defence and Foreign Office fee support–all consequences of Conservative government. Without their remaining taxpayer support, which comes very substantially from the assisted-places scheme and more marginally from their charitable tax exemptions, some of the lazier and more inefficient may go under and others will have to lower their academic sights still further. Neither eventuality would be a tragedy; indeed the abolition of the assisted-places scheme would funnel brighter youngsters into the state schools, which would then eventually rise in the league tables.

Blair’s difficulty is that it was he who brought educational privilege on to the political front-burner through a family decision to send his son to an idiosyncratic grant maintained (GM) school that positively exudes upward-mobility aspirations.

At first he got away with the public argument. There is no longer much sympathy for the, often unpleasant, Labour Party ritual of making male leaders’ children mere creatures of party-political correctness. Indeed, most parents scarcely know the difference between a GM school and a local-authority one–partly because only 2 per cent of schools have chosen to leave their local council and because they look much the same as other schools and do not charge fees. Even the government inspectors cannot find any evidence that these schools are better or worse than the other 98 per cent. But by countermanding Blunkett on educational VAT, Blair has forced Labour to work out a detailed policy on both public and GM schools.

GM schools were personally invented by Mrs Thatcher seven years ago with a negative ideological objective–to sever the link between the local community and its schools. Labour believes that there should be such a link, however, and Tony Blair has made the strengthening of the “community” the cornerstone of his social policy. Labour’s stance so far has been to talk in emollient terms of bringing these schools within a “framework of democratic accountability”. This will mean finding a reasonable balance between the responsibilities of heads, governors, local councils and (if Labour intends to preserve it) the new government quango, the Funding Agency for Schools (FAS), set up last year to supervise GM schools.

David Blunkett will find the GM heads united on only one issue. They share the relief, experienced by the polytechnic directors five years ago, of being able to plan for the future, free of ownership by the local town-hall bureaucracy. In fact, all schools now have 80 per cent of this freedom under “local management” (LMS); but GM heads do not believe it. Their schools are now independent charitable bodies owned by their governors. I discovered when I addressed their conference two years ago that they do not want ever again to enter into any relationship, however tenuous, with the local councils they have walked away from.

If I were Blunkett, I would concede ownership. The fact that GM governors now own the schools’ buildings holds much potential for building better links between these GM schools and their communities. Indeed, the partnership between the state and the church schools, begun in the 19th century and sealed in the 1944 Education Act, offered the best of all worlds–ratepayer support, no fee-paying, a buffer of local administration between the school and central government and church ownership with the school constituted as a charitable body. This ownership principle, which still applies to most church schools, should be the basis of any new agreement with GM schools.

The only other substantial issue affecting GM schools is the source of their money. At present, it comes from central government and is distributed by FAS, an expensive and politically packed quango. One neat solution for Labour would be to keep FAS, change its membership and terms of reference and give it the (very difficult) task of finding a fair nationwide formula for funding every school in England and Wales. Worse than any discrimination between GM and local-authority schools are the historical differentials in school funding by different local authorities. Once a fair formula has been arrived at, whether the cash is funnelled through local councils or not ceases to matter.

Blunkett should then talk to the public schools. If Labour is now not going to abolish them (which it is not), rather than removing charitable status, the party might do well to examine how charitable status could become a unifying factor, involving some quality control and other regulation, applying to all schools, whether or not they charge fees. In this context, there could also be useful discussions about the responsibilities of these schools to the communities where they are established. Most were founded for the poor and have long catered for the rich.

This is an issue central to Tony Blair’s agenda. In the past, good local authorities have built fine school traditions. But it is doubtful whether local councils, now increasingly creatures of central government, can fulfil this role any longer. If both the independent and GM schools could be reassured that Labour now believes in democratic partnership, rather than democratic hegemony, they would probably be ready to have a civilised discussion about the adoption of a list of community responsibilities (which, for GM schools, would involve clearer criteria for the admission of pupils) that might be enshrined in educational charity law.

Would such discussions as these mean an abandonment of the comprehensive principle that has always formed the cornerstone of Labour policy? The truth is that the (originally American) dream of using secondary schools as a social crucible has never materialised in the big cities on either side of the Atlantic. In the US, it’s all talk of “separate but equal” again; magnet schools, special classes for ethnic groups, schools for particular talent rather than schools for all. In Conservative legislation, this translates as the new culture of “quality, choice and diversity”. To the Conservatives, these were essentially weasel words in the 1992 act, code for the reintroduction of privilege by stealth; but as part of a wider debate on quality education and mutual responsibilities within communities, they could be more positively applied by Labour.

The Thatcher cult of consumerism in education has dented the English secondary school comprehensive ideal made possible by the consensus legislation Butler put together during the second world war. But it is significant that no Tory government has dared overtly to dismantle the comprehensive system and bring back the II-plus. There is much that Labour can do, not only to consolidate secondary education, but to build a system of lifelong, comprehensive, further and higher education, which because it is based on the consumer demand of students who vote, will be more difficult for any future government of the right to destroy.

Alberta Funds Private Schools With Taxpayer Cash?

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“The task force believes that private schools meet a public need, they meet the needs of certain students, they reflect the diversity of Alberta society, and they provide choice for parents. If private schools offer the Alberta Program of Studies and meet the same standards as public schools, they should receive public funding.”

Gary Duthler, executive director of the Association of Independent Schools and Colleges in Alberta (AISCA), explains, “What the task force has said is, `This is why we fund private schools. It’s not because they have a good lobby group, it’s not because the government

Rich kids with tax dollars?

wants to privatize the whole system. It is because they are part of what we are trying to do with education, and that is educate children.’ That is the most important statement because it really sets a principle about why the funding exits. After that it is merely a question of haggling about the price.”

The increase to the independents will begin in the school year after next, when it will rise from the present level of $1,815 per student to $2,339. This will increase it from just under 50% of Alberta’s basic per-student instructional public-separate school grant to 60%. The province will still contribute nothing for facilities and transportation, which for other children amount to an average of about $2,000 each per year. The public-separate school instructional grant will rise from the current average of $3,686 to $3,937 by the year 2000. With the new recommendations, special needs students will receive full funding regardless of whether they attend a public or an independent school.

Of the 26 recommendations in the PSFTF report, all of which Education Minister Gary Mar and the government accepted, 10 merely endorse existing policy and practice. Independents will continue to be able to select their students. The current accountability requirements were judged adequate and will be maintained. They will continue to set their tuition without government interference. In the event that they cannot carry the cost of a special needs student they will continue to be responsible for finding that student an alternative program.

To qualify for the funding henceforth, the independents must accept a few new regulations. They must teach the Alberta Program of Studies (not a major change–their curriculum is already subject to veto by Alberta Education). No private school will qualify for funding until after one full year of operation. Each independent must designate a principal with an approved teaching certificate. If an independent expels a student, it must find him another program for the rest of that school. A parent council will be required in those schools where parents do not already make up a majority of the governing board.

The expulsion regulation causes some concern because independents get only half the normal instructional grant to begin with. Brian Hazeltine, principal of Koinonia Christian School in Airdrie, 18 miles north of Calgary, says it would be unreasonable to expect an independent school to make up the whole amount if a student transfers.

More perilous, perhaps, is that the province will officially adopt a policy in the AISCA bylaws which states that “all private schools must not offer programs that in theory or in practice will promote or foster doctrines of racial or ethnic superiority or persecution, religious intolerance or persecution, social change through violent action, or disobedience of laws.”

Some worry that to government policy bureaucrats loaded words like “tolerance” and “racism” mean something quite different than they do to independent schools. Roy Beyer, president of the Calgary-based Canada Family Action Coalition, says, “Unfortunately, the word `tolerance’ has come to mean `amoral’ in political circles–in other words a person who takes a firm position in any particular moral issue is simply labelled `intolerant.’ ” Mr. Beyer sees this policy as possibly having an insidious effect, particularly for religious schools. The Bible is full of intolerance toward things like homosexual behaviour; is teaching Biblical values therefore “promoting intolerance”? Likewise, most religions teach that they alone offer salvation: is that “promoting religious intolerance”? Most liberals would say it is.

But Mr. Duthler does not see that problem arising in Alberta. “The wording is pretty careful. It says `racial and ethnic superiority or persecution,’ so they cannot teach that a white person is better than a black person,” he says. “But it says `religious intolerance or persecution,’ so they will still be able to teach religion, and even say that one world view, such as Christianity, Judaism or Islam, is superior to the other if they wish.” At least for now.

Private Education Failed In Hartford

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Hartford was the first city to place its children entirely in the hands of a corporate contractor, so the symbolism of the ouster is considerable. Teachers, parents and political leaders opposed to school profiteering established a new and effective alliance this past fall, waging the hardest-fought campaign for Board of Ed seats in memory. E.A.I. fell so far short of its projections that advocates of privatization like former Education Secretary Lamar Alexander have been reduced to silence.

E.A.I.’s collapse in Hartford is the most recent in a string of setbacks for the school privateers. In November, the same company was tossed out of Baltimore’s public schools, where a study by the University of Maryland revealed that Golle had cooked E.A.I.s report card on student performance. A few months earlier, the New York State Assembly banned Channel One, the commercial school television network founded by Chris Whittle, from any public classroom in the state. Whittle’s other highly touted school venture, The Edison Project, which he launched with the promise of building 1,000 private McSchools, is in tatters. Edison is managing just four public schools around the country and scrounging for operating capital on Wall Street.

But the fight against the commercialized classroom is several rounds from conclusion. Recently, Consumers Union released a comprehensive and frightening report, “Captive Kids: Commercial Pressures on Kids at School” (Consumers Union, 101 Truman Avenue, Yonkers, NY 10703). C.U. examined more than 200 examples of classroom materials produced by commercial interests ranging from DuPont to the dairy lobby. More than two-thirds “contained biased or incomplete information, promoting a viewpoint that favors consumption of the sponsor’s product or service or a position that favors the company or its economic agenda.” And activists from Massachusetts to Minnesota are fighting school voucher plans that could breathe new life into commercial hucksters like E.A.I. or allow public funding of religious schools.

The President in his State of the Union Message and the First Lady in her new book ignored this battle, instead showering praise on measures like requiring school uniforms. In New Haven, a few miles down the road from Hartford, children at two elementary schools where kids must wear uniforms perform no better–and have no less violence–than at comparable uniform-free schools.

On the other hand, money still makes a difference. Lately, conservatives have pointed out that the per-pupil expenditures of cities like Hartford and New Haven now approach that of their suburban neighbors. But that is misleading, since cities bear huge costs–crumbling buildings, large-system administrations, programs for children and families destabilized by poverty–not required in the burbs. Like the privateering fad, the uniform fad obscures this enduring inequity in a smokescreen of get-tough corporate management.